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http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/previe...van&id=3524989

The huddle, the pre-snap team meeting that has been as integral a part of college football as the hashmark and the good-looking quarterback, has succumbed at age 112 because of a sudden onset of obsolescence.

Tony Franklin's philosophy is that tempo will beat a defense.
Founded by legendary coach Amos Alonzo Stagg in 1896 as a method to fight crowd noise, the huddle suffered the same fate as the leather helmet and the wishbone offense. The game passed it by.

AUBURN, Ala. -- The above obituary isn't quite true. Yet.

Life is moving at warp speed. Stress levels are increasing. Decisions must be made quickly. You see it everywhere you turn: fast food is faster and news is constantly new. Take a look at basic communication: Letter writing gave way to e-mail, which evolved to become texting, which mutated into the social-networking site Twitter -- whatever can be said needs no more than 140 characters.

There's no time to ponder, to ruminate. Reflection is for mirrors. The evolution of daily life demands that the most critical fast-twitch muscle is the brain.

College football isn't immune from these pressures. The newest trend in the game echoes the speed at which the harried American moves through the day.

The increased tempo, thus far, has been applied exclusively to variations of the spread, which is to college offense what Abercrombie is to high school haberdashery. The spread stresses defenses by forcing them to cover the entire field. "Tempo" -- in the coaching argot it is understood that tempo is fast -- forces the defense to cover an increasing amount of real estate in less time.

Plays are called faster. Offenses rush to the line of scrimmage. Defenses struggle to line up correctly. Tempo leaves no time for a huddle. It leaves no time for much of anything.

What texting has done to the English language -- think, OMG -- fast-tempo spread offenses have done to the playbook. It is leaner and stripped to the basics. The offense doesn't outscheme the defense. The offense wears the defense down.

One of the reasons for the surprising success of both Kansas and Missouri last season -- each finished in the top 10 nationally in total offense -- is that both offenses increased their tempo.


[+] EnlargeJonathan Ferrey/Getty Images

Chip Kelly's offense was flying-high with Dennis Dixon leading the charge last season.
At Oregon, second-year offensive coordinator Chip Kelly, one of the most prominent gurus of the faster tempo, believes that his team should be lined up to run a play 22 seconds after the last play ended. When head coach Mike Bellotti hired Kelly a year-and-a-half ago, Bellotti overruled his staff, which didn't want to ratchet up the pace of the offense.

"As a former offensive coordinator, I know the pressure it puts on a defense," Bellotti said. "And just the tempo changes the game, from a conditioning standpoint, a physiological standpoint and a mental standpoint. So I said, 'All right.'"

"There's a saying in sport that fatigue makes cowards of all men," Auburn offensive coordinator Tony Franklin said. "I think it's the most true thing in all of sports."

The saying, usually attributed to the legendary coach Vince Lombardi, in fact came from Gen. George S. Patton, who wrote in March 1944, "Fatigue makes cowards of us all. Men in condition do not tire."

The saying is the foundation of the offense that Franklin has installed at Auburn since arriving in December 2007 after two seasons at Troy. The Tigers averaged 67 plays per game in the regular season. Franklin arrived just weeks before the team played its bowl game and installed a stripped-down version of his offense in eight postseason practices.

"That first day of bowl practice we ran four times as many snaps in half the time," center Jason Bosley said. "We were dead. I was thinking, 'Oh, my God. What are we doing?'"

Auburn ran 90 plays and gained 423 yards in its 23-20 overtime defeat of Clemson in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl. On a few plays, Bosley said, some Clemson linemen didn't -- couldn't -- get in their stances.

That looked more like a Franklin-coached offense. Troy, which led the Sun Belt with 452.8 yards of total offense per game last season, did so in part because it averaged nearly 81 snaps per game.

"You can be frisky and everything, but the moment you reach fatigue, it doesn't matter. You're dying," Franklin said. "Kind of like the fight with [George] Foreman and [Muhammad] Ali, where Ali set back on the ropes for seven or eight rounds and took the beating. Then all of a sudden, Foreman was dead. His arms were gone, and he [Ali] knocks him out. That's kind of the philosophy of this thing. Eventually, fatigue will set in. Even though it might set in on you, too, because you're playing at such [a] fast tempo, you know what you're doing and they don't."

You can be frisky and everything, but the moment you reach fatigue, it doesn't matter.
--Auburn OC Tony Franklin


The idea of playing quickly hearkens back to Stagg's day. As managing the game shifted from the quarterback to the sideline, as coaches took over play calling and moved players on and off the field as if they were chess pieces, games became longer.

Some schools used no-huddle wisely. Florida State coach Bobby Bowden called it "the Kentucky Derby offense" when quarterback Charlie Ward won the Heisman Trophy and led the Seminoles to the 1993 national championship. Bowden would play a role in the rise of the fast-tempo spread offense.

Franklin failed to convince his head coach at Kentucky, Hal Mumme, to adopt the increased tempo for his already high-scoring offense. When Kentucky fired Mumme and the staff after the 2000 season, Franklin couldn't get a job. Desperate for income, he devised an entire offense based on tempo and enrolled in a seminar in Los Angeles to learn how to market it. He made his first sale to a high school head coach in Hoover, Ala., Rush Probst.

Hoover won four consecutive state championships and became the subject of "Two-A-Days," a reality show on MTV. It's safe to say the offense worked. Soon, Franklin was selling his system to dozens of high school head coaches. He lost track of how many state championships it won.

"Somewhere between 13 and 15," he said.

Tempo is nothing more than the latest offensive weapon in the battle over which side dictates the action at the line of scrimmage. The beauty of a faster tempo is that once it's established, the mere threat of it works. Just because the offense lines up fast doesn't mean that it has to snap fast. There are other advantages to be gained.

"We can get to the line, get set and see what the defense is doing," said center Jon Cooper of Oklahoma, which will quicken its pace this season. "Instead of the defense watching us and our personnel, we get to see their personnel they're bringing in."

Bosley, the Auburn center, pointed out that unlike the receivers and the backs, who are more likely to shuttle on and off the field, the offensive line is out there for every quick snap. He played last season at 291 pounds. He began August workouts this week at 278. He said he feels quicker and stronger.

You'll see less of this when Oklahoma takes the field this season.
To prepare the Tigers, Bosley said, conditioning coach Kevin Yoxall limited the time between sprints and gassers this year to 27 seconds. Yoxall studied video to determine the average time between plays. That should prepare Auburn for the advent of the 40-second clock, an NFL rule adopted this season by the NCAA.

The change from the old rule, in which teams had 25 seconds to run a play after the referee gave the "ready to play" signal once the ball was positioned at the line of scrimmage, has forced more teams to adopt a faster tempo. Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops, whose Sooners are in the midst of a transition to a faster tempo, said he made the decision in part because of the 40-second clock.


"I think it's going to be an issue," Stoop said of the clock. "We don't have transmitters in helmets [as NFL quarterbacks do]. The offensive coordinator can't just call something to the quarterback and then it's out there. The coordinator calls it, the offensive coach on the field signals it, the quarterback processes it and gets it to the rest of the offense. Now you're going to the line of scrimmage. That clock is going down. So it's an issue we're all going to have to manage."

Auburn head coach Tommy Tuberville believes his team reacts more quickly to the game with the faster tempo, much in the way that a quick-working pitcher keeps his fielders on their toes.

"They concentrate better. They're having more fun. They're more involved as a team," Tuberville said. "I really like the attitude of our team. It's the way we practice. They are focused more. They'll get bored because it's not quite as complex in some areas as the West Coast [offense]. Getting bored sometimes is good. It means it's simple."

Franklin pleads guilty to being unable to win the chess game with a defensive coordinator, but wants to change the game from chess to tag.

"I know that I'm never going to outthink those guys, and I know I'm not as smart as a lot of guys are. If I can take the game out of my hands, where it's not me trying to be smarter than the defensive guy, it's just me trying to get lined up, play fast, get a few plays, but try to do them really well, then I got lot better chance to be successful."

By the end of the Chick-fil-A Bowl, the Clemson defense was spent.
In fact, Franklin said, if he sees a bad play forming, say, the defense loaded up on the side he wants to run it, he calls the play anyway. Just rip the bandage off quickly and get it over with. Why?

"Well, because my belief is eventually, the tempo will win," Franklin said. "It may not win early but eventually it's going to win. Because eventually, what's going to happen is one, they're not going to get lined up properly. Two is that they're not even going to get their hands on the ground sometime before we run a play. If that means that I have to have three or four really bad plays in a game, that's OK.

"If you think about it, how many times do you have an extremely complicated NFL offense that has six shifts and motions before the snap, with these geniuses, and they run it and they lose two yards. I could have done the same thing in a lot less time. I've always thought I'm as smart as them. I'll just lose it faster."

The ramifications of a faster tempo are felt well beyond the two teams. Auburn's sports information director Chuck Gallina runs the crew that keeps statistics at Tigers home games. Keeping up with Franklin's offense, he said, is unlike anything his crew has ever attempted.

"We were slap worn out by the end of the spring game," Gallina said. "It was crazy."

That's what the faster tempo has wrought. When the 2008 season begins, enjoy watching the teams that huddle. It might be your last chance.


Ivan Maisel is a senior writer for ESPN.com. Send your questions and comments to Ivan at ivan.maisel@espn3.com. His new book, "The Maisel Report: College Football's Most Overrated and Underrated Players, Coaches, Teams, & Traditions," is on sale now.

I was not surprised at Tuberville's decision to go to the quick no hubble offense. What I was surprised at, was he not hiring former Razorback co-offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn. Malzahn, now co-coordinator of the offensive at Tulsa proved last season, that his vision can put the big numbers up in the college game.
Malzahn has authored a few books on the no huddle, and many in the game today still contact him on it.
After Gus and Houston's public divorce at Arkansas after just one year, I told friends to watch and see. Auburn will be calling him because of Kodi Burns and his desires to play for Gus. Arkansas showed little interest in Kodi during his senior campaign at Ft. Smith Northside. Most thought the program was loaded at the QB position with Mustain, Dick and others under Malzahn watchful eye st the time, so Burns bolted for Auburn along with standout OL Lee Zimbia.
This year will tell Tubs along if the decision he made on Franklin's hire was a good one or not.
But be sure of this, Tuberville will take a good look at the box scores on Sunday to see what Tulsa did the night before with Gus play callings.

Tulsa Facts:

Hurricane returns nine starters to the nation's leading offense.
The nation's leading offense in 2007.
41 points per game.
It was an offense that had a 5,000-yard passer, one 1,000-yard rusher and three 1,000-yard receivers - becoming the first team in NCAA history to accomplish that feat.

...........

Tony Franklin... destined to be...

• shocked at the speed of SEC defenses.
• shocked at the amount of time The Barn's offense is kept off the field.
• shocked at how his offense is so quickly figured out by opposing DCs.
• relegated to Tubby's doghouse before the end of the season.

You can find this article at:
http://www.sportingnews.com/yourturn...c.php?t=443872
SN's team previews: No. 16 Auburn
August 9, 2008
Matt Hayes
Sporting News
More: Auburn two-minute drill | Full top 50

Sporting News is counting down its top 50 teams in college football, one by one, from early July until kickoff of the season in late August. Here's a preview of the No. 16 Auburn Tigers.


There's this fan-based theory floating around The Plains: New offensive coordinator Tony Franklin needed just two weeks to implement his spread offense last bowl season, and Auburn handled a formidable defense in a Peach Bowl win over Clemson.


How good can the Tigers' offense be after 15 spring practices and a month of fall camp?


"That sounds good," Franklin says. "But it's a lot more than that."


The system, which has principles of the Hal Mumme/Mike Leach pass-happy schemes, begins and ends with quarterbacks and receivers. And here's the strength of the Auburn offense: running backs.


Coach Tommy Tuberville recruited over the years for a power running game, so it's no surprise tailbacks Ben Tate and Brad Lester are the two best players on the offense. While the new scheme won't ignore the run, there will be fewer formations with lead blockers and more with multiple receivers spreading the defense and forcing opponents to cover laterally.


To pull that off, Auburn has to throw and catch the ball with accuracy and consistency. And that wasn't necessarily the case during the 15 practices this spring. Part of the problem was the tenuous situation at quarterback, and the fact the Tigers are inexperienced at receiver.


The starting quarterback job is between junior college transfer Chris Todd and Kodi Burns, who played well in spots in the win over Clemson.


Franklin's system relies on wideouts reading defenses as much as the quarterback. Many of the routes are option routes, and if there is no cohesion between the quarterback and wideouts, the passing game suffers.


Like in the Mumme/Leach systems, Franklin likes to work the middle of the field with his offense, and that means tight ends and slot receivers will be at a premium.


Mario Fannin moved to slotback, and the one-time heir to the tailback spot looks good in his new position. The fumble problems he had at tailback weren't an issue in the spring, and he was consistently getting open and showing athletic ability after the catch. Then there's Tommy Trott, who lost 20 pounds and now plays more like an H-back or slot receiver than a tight end.


Beyond the new offense, the Tigers could make it back to the SEC championship for the first time since their undefeated season of 2004 because of their stout interior lines.


The offensive linemen all lost weight to transition to Franklin's quick-paced offense, and although three sophomores (including rising star Lee Ziemba) had some rough moments last fall, the group is very aggressive and won't have to protect as long with five- and seven-step quarterback drops a thing of the past.


The defensive front, meanwhile, has two of the league's best players in tackle/end Sen'Derrick Marks and rush end Antonio Coleman. Marks will play inside in run situations, and likely shift outside in long down-and-distance passing situations. Coleman didn't start until midway through last season, and he didn't get nearly the attention of Marks. But by the end of the season, Coleman was as disruptive as any down lineman in the SEC.


The Tigers are strong at linebacker, with undersized but fast linebackers and physical defensive backs. Tray Blackmon is as good as any linebacker in the nation when he's properly motivated, but he takes too many plays off and has had too many problems off the field.


Paul Rhoads takes over for popular Will Muschamp as defensive coordinator, and also coaches the secondary. The group is talented but became a bit thinner after cornerback Aairon Savage was knocked out for the year earlier this week with a torn ACL.


Zac Etheridge and Mike McNeil took some lumps early as freshmen, then grew into the safety positions in the second half of the season. Rhoads likes to use his safeties much like the rest of the front seven--in various pressure packages depending on the offensive formations.


Two new coordinators, two new schemes. How quickly and successfully Auburn adjusts to them will go a long way in determining how far the Tigers go this season.

I believe all Auburn fans new Tony Franklin didn't just teach his entire system in 9 practice days as per this article. These journalist act like we have a bad qb situation when the reality the reason why they both are going to start is because they are both equally good. One stronger than the other in a different category but that gives you two options to work with. Paul Rhodes was hired for his teaching fundament skills and his secondary coaching skills. The D system has not and will not change from last year. Coach Tubbs is the mastermind of the D. Our biggest weakness on the team is secondary because yes it is thin in depth.

I pray you're right, 'cause that's what the rest of the SEC is hoping for.

If Auburn played well with Cox and Borges. Imagine an offense that went up 5 ranks offensively in 1 game!

When the other team had nothing to prepare on at all...

And missing LBs, and a chop blocked DLineman

AU doesn't have to be perfect out of the gate. By the time UA plays them they will have the kinks worked out.

2 QBs may very well be better than 1 good one, but I'm not buying it. This offense with it's 2 headed QB monster will be the biggest gimmick this side of Gus Mazalthan. Whether it works or not is debatable at this point. One thing is for sure AU will not go after Tulsa's OC no matter how Franklin turns out.

Oh boy, he runs a Hal Mumme style offense? How many times did Kentucky win the SEC when Mumme(and Franklin) were there? I forget. Can anybody help me out here?

I wonder how Troy managed to get 28 first downs versus Georgia and 21 verus Florida.

I wonder how Troy scored 34 points on UGA and 31 verus Florida?

Both are SEC teams with SEC speed on defense.

Just for fun! How many points did LSU score on Florida? Thats right less then Troy did.....


Just a couple of other little tidbits about Franklin the first year he was at Troy and his years at Kent.

• The Trojans held a 17-10 lead over Florida State late in fourth quarter at FSU. Troy more than doubled the total offense produced by the University of Miami’s offense versus FSU the previous week.

• Troy scored 20 points versus Georgia Tech one week after Notre Dame managed only 14.

• Troy improved its conference scoring offense by 13 points per game.


Franklin joined the University of Kentucky football staff in 1997. Franklin was named offensive coordinator for the 2000 season and led the Wildcats to the nation’s second best passing offense, as well as the nation’s 11th best team in total offense.

Franklin helped lead the Wildcats to their first back to back bowl appearances in 15 years and their first New Year’s Bowl game appearance in 50 seasons.

Those teams were playing TROY! Basically, an off week for them.

3 years ago when Texas Tech was going to play Bama in the Cotton Bowl people were saying they would put up 50 points on Bama with that gimmick Offense. They didn't score a TD until less than a minute to go in the game. They were averaging 43 pts. a game going into that one.

The barn will put up big numbers against weaker teams and will be shut down by the better ones.

Well all that certainly explains Louisiana Monroe doesn't it?